Writing about the business of design
Welcome to a library of articles about the business of design.
You'll find articles about current research, our experience founding and managing a design studio and about insights uncovered during mentoring sessions with Australian designers.
The articles are released weekly via a news-packed EDM. Subscribe via the homepage
If your peers talk business and you talk design, you’ll lose
While you focus on craft and visual quality, competitors are talking strategy, outcomes, and business value. They’re speaking the language clients want to hear.
Why your competitors are stealing your clients
The uncomfortable truth: while you’re perfecting your portfolio, other designers are building relationships through content. Every week you stay quiet is another week potential clients discover someone else.
Designing your way through a crisis
We had the good fortune to have worked through the 1987 market crash, the dot.com boom and crash and the global financial crisis. I say good fortune because it taught us how to pivot.
When we face changes like we are now seeing we can’t do business as usual.
Has design got over complicated
Ability to simplify the complex is an attribute many designers spruik but in reality have we done the opposite and complicated our industry to the point of confusing clients?
Stop networking like everyone else
Break the design by the hour cycle by finding clients who value your expertise through targeted networking
Why care about competitors
Business strategists suggest we ignore competitors and only worry about what we can control. We would argue the opposite – the more we know, the better.
Designers should dump networking groups
Discover how designers use LinkedIn as a powerful, targeted networking tool. Save time and money finding, retaining, and growing clients more effectively
Sprint to the finish line (instead of limping to the end of the year)
There’s not long to go … your choice, you can slide into the end of the year or you can pull up your big girl pants and sprint to the finishing line.
Australian designers and burnout: what’s driving it and how to stop it (2025)
Seventy per cent of people working in Australia’s media, marketing and creative sectors say they’ve experienced burnout in the past 12 months. That makes burnout the standout concern across the creative industry.
What’s your knowledge sharing contribution?
The industry we have is the one we’ve collectively built. But here’s the thing: when it comes to knowledge sharing in Australian design, we’re walking past a lot of low standards.
Proving a return on design investment (RODI)
Australian businesses can lift productivity and profits by investing in design that’s tied to business outcomes. Research from other countries shows the gains are real and repeatable here.
Why clients offer design advice and how to change the conversation
Clients comment on colours and fonts because that’s what they can see. The strategy, psychology, and user research? That’s invisible to them. Here’s how to change that conversation.
